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“But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God…” John 1.12
Last week, we (Southern California InterVarsity) had an evangelistic plunge on the UCLA campus. It was fun, tiring, and full of learning experiences (which I will share in future posts). The aim of the week was to raise awareness of the sex-traffic industry around the world. In partnership with the International Justice Mission, we blitzed the campus during the day and organized nightly events to bring awareness to the issue.
One of the beautiful things for me was seeing one of the best pictures of the marriage evangelism and social justice (particularly in a campus ministry). Generally speaking, the Church can find itself concerning itself with either one or the other. The two have not gone hand in hand as they should.
Probably more among liberals, social justice can sometimes become more central than Jesus and life through him. For conservatives, the number of baptisms (and conversions) seems to take precedence in what marks a healthy church or ministry. One of the profound things I learned from the keynote speaker (R. York Moore, an evangelist with InterVarsity), is that pursuing justice without Jesus may be a good deed, but not really possible. He asserted that the injustices in the world are not material issues but spiritual issues that require spiritual answers. Only Jesus offers us hope in that.
As we train the Church (or students in my case) in various aspects of “Basic Christianity”, social justice issues take on the role of Christianity 201. I am beginning to think that the discipleship issues of Christianity 201 (cross-cultural ministry, mission(s), love for the poor, etc…) are so core to our conversion that empowering people in the faith gives us no choice but to call them to love the things that are on Jesus’s heart.
Having said that, I wonder if practically speaking, churches and communities of faith should not only be preaching the gospel (doing the evangelism thing), but should be adopting social justice issues. I wonder if more of us need to be doing what:
- York is doing–he is passionate about the sex-traffic industry, and his goal is to empower students to care for those issues.
- Saddleback Church is pushing its P.E.A.C.E. initiative, with much of its effort to fight HIV/AIDS in Africa.
These are a couple of examples, but honestly, I am not aware of too many. What would it look like if in my community, we adopted one of the “big” social justice issues of the day, and as a community raised the awareness level in our context and practically empowered people to respond–whether it be financially supporting a reputable organization fighting the injustice, serving in a context that addresses it, or facilitating people’s life and career transformations that will bring change in the long term?
The heroes that come to mind to me are the abolitionists over 100 years ago, whose faith led them to fight injustice. These were not some theological heretics–but people who acted on their conviction to help end a terrible injustice. I want students under my leadership to learn to do evangelism, study the Bible, adopt a servant’s heart, etc… but I also want them to be people of active-conviction who bring renewal to the people and the world around them. These are the children of God Jesus empowers.
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